Going with a system that chooses to have only a few meaningful and generic skills is not a problem, as long as you have enough abilities or perks to specialize each skill and obviously it's for the player to customize his character and choose the perks he wants to have. Perks can have dependencies on other perks and be upgradable in several levels (for some perks it makes sense), which makes them work like sub-skills. I think the Bloodlines model of spending xp is the best here. Upgrading any stat or buying a perk costs xp and if my character has enough he can upgrade his stats anytime.

Anyway it's great to know there will be perks and the game will have an area map we can explore. Hopefully also random and special encounters.

Your calling devs lazy because they cant add everything or if they add everything they cant add meaningful game play for all of those things, has hit a pet peave of mine. Its the stupid IT manager point of view, you know the one who has you you working on 3 projects that require full time attention and then tells marketing "Yea he can build you a custom application to do your non-urgent stuff you could be doing yourself with a spreadsheet".

Usually, a tier system (few skill levels that provide clear benefit, vs classical skill that is a sliding scale with unclear payoffs) works best in a game with 1-3 PC, while in a game with dozen(s) of controllable characters, it creates other issues. How do you plan to handle multiple instances of the same skill on different levels?

The survival aspect already provides a good solution, time management: a lowly mechanic is still valuable when you have a top tier expert, because he can handle the plumbing while the expert builds some crazy device. In fact, his presence *allows* the expert to build his stuff because otherwise he would be bogged down in trivial stuff that is essential for survival.

Id like to hear more about how you plan to approach this aspect, especially if you havent given it much thought yet - it ties in perfectly with the human drama you want to focus on, and enhances a "simple" tier system really well. It probably solves the problem of in-depth builds better then adding different perks. Both at the same time would be preferable, of course, but making them balanced with themselves, and the game in general, is easier said then done even for 5-10 new perks.

Take Game of Life. Its turing-complete, meaning that it can represent everything a normal computer (and probably the human brain) can. You could run Crysis on that thing. Now start adding arbitrary rules to make it "more complex", because it is "way to simple and childish". Chances are high it will simply collapse after just a couple rules.

Of course, for real, practical games, costs of creation are the dominant factor. Just keep in mind that "more" is usually worse then "less" unless you pour significant playtesting ressources into it.

inhuman:Gameplay core being the foundation of the story-world is one is my opinion as well. However, there is no free lunch, and making the story-world you want, then engineering the gameplay core that would create it is probably alot more realistic then creating an incredible system, then trying to hammer your world into it.

The question of how the system handles time, is one I have been wanting to know the answers to since I started watching and joining these discussions. It will be a major player in the feel of the game, establishing tension, driving story, and establishing the feel of a living world... or not. Hehe no pressure guys

Anyway I am waiting for them to drop that info in an update, even though to most people it may not be as sexy as skills and whatnot.

Also I hope that if they considered doing this as a timeless open ended RPG they have reconsidered and don't bring that unfortunate thought up

Your calling devs lazy because they cant add everything or if they add everything they cant add meaningful game play for all of those things, has hit a pet peave of mine. Its the stupid IT manager point of view, you know the one who has you you working on 3 projects that require full time attention and then tells marketing "Yea he can build you a custom application to do your non-urgent stuff you could be doing yourself with a spreadsheet".

One of the timeless replies I've seen so many times. Time and resources, the ever justifying excuse all developers have by default for every bad decision in a game. Perhaps if only they knew how to use that time and resources better, and to manage their projects better.

Moving 400,000 VoIP customers from vendor switches to in-house ones. Numerous product launches.Removing Kerberos as an unnecessary complication in the structure of our implementation of Packet Cable and DOCSISDOCSIS 3.0

Right now I am in the middle of these projects new modem product launchIPv6IPTVbilling system reconciliation with provisioning system

And due to the nature of the systems I manage I am constantly involved in other peoples projects. As I don't want to vomit up a resume online we can leave that list incomplete.

Now I didn't ask the question for a game of my cock is bigger than yours, I asked it to gain an understanding of your life experiences with this sort of thing. If I know something from your personal history it helps me to communicate to you on terms I know you can relate to.

In other words if I know where your coming from I can try to use that to more effectively gain some sort of mutual understanding.